A blanking die is used in a stamping department of an automobile plant to cut sheet metal into a shaped or rectangular metallic blank that can be fed into a stamping press for fabrication of a stamped part from the fed metallic blank. The blanking die may be implemented in a manufacturing process, where a portion of a coil of sheet metal is fed to the blanking die. In an example of this process, a blanking press is provided above the blanking die and serves to press the sheet metal fed to the blanking die onto cutters on a surface of the blanking die, thereby cutting a blank from the coil of sheet metal. The blanking press is then moved upward, thereby allowing the newly formed blank to be ejected by the blanking die to be used in another portion of the manufacturing process. The ejection of the blank enables another portion of the coil of sheet metal to be fed to the blanking die for blanking. The blanking operation of this example is designed to be repeated to produce numerous blanks quickly.
In certain situations, it may be desired to form two blanks with one down-stroke of the blanking press. To support such a process, a blanking die can be designed to output two blanks for every down-stroke of the blanking press. In an example of such a blanking die, a front blank on the blanking die is ejected out of a front portion of the blanking die, whereas a rear blank, which is positioned behind the front blank on the blanking die, is ejected out of a side portion of the blanking die to be conveyed to a stacker using a set of rollers.
However, the rear blank may be scratched when it is ejected from the blanking die in directions other than a direction associated with the ejection of the rear blank out of the side portion of the blanking die. In addition, in the example provided above, the front blank is typically ejected across the die to an exit conveyor by a set of magnetic rollers. However, magnetic rollers are only effective in conveying blanks in applications where the sheet metal fed to the blanking die is a certain type of metal that can be magnetized, such as iron, cobalt, and types of steel containing particular amounts of iron. Thus, magnetic rollers are unable to be used with metals lacking a requisite amount of iron contained therein, such as, but not limited to, aluminum and certain types of stainless steel.